The city told him they would pay for a car wash. And then the worst part, he drove it here to work this morning. As he arrived foul smoke was steaming from the engine as the nasty crap evaporated and burned. I don't understand how he could have stomached the smell and the sloshing.
Seriously. He just finished hosing the thing down. I hope he doesn't get ill.
I made a new T-Shirt for myself. It says Vegan Zombies Want Grains. I think that is funny. I am not a vegan, but hey I'm not a zombie either. If you think it's funny too and you want a copy, you can order one from Zazzle. Be sure to check out all of their shirt options and colors. You can even order a Vegan Zombies Want Grains infant jumper.
I just heard about McDonald's installing experimental drive-thru technology. In these systems, the employee on the drive-thru speaker is not actually in the McDonald's. He is somewhere in a cubicle anywhere in the world. He punches up your desired food stuffs on a computer that sends the order back to your local Micky D's.
I wonder where they have put these systems into place.
We are swiftly approaching Alpha on God of War. Yay. Looks like we may come in early. That would be nice. Here's hoping.
I think that instead of advertising a car's efficiency in MPG it should be measured in MPD ( miles per dollar. ) That way whatever the power source ( electric, gasoline, hydrogen, or natural gas ) you'd have an easy basis for comparision.
I realize that MPD is very with respect to where you are in the nation and the current costs of energy in that part of the nation.
So, right now, my car gets 9.17 miles per dollar. How far does a dollar take you?
For the daft: MPD = MPG / (Current Price Of Gas Per Gallon)
If I wanted to start an environmentally charged business right now I would look into home heating in the north east. Most of the homes in New England run their heating on oil. Oil prices are at a record high of $55 a barrel. Home heating oil is up to $2.00 a gallon. This means high costs for New Englanders this winter. Oil delivery drivers wince when someone asks them the price. On average it is figured that a household will spend an extra $500 in heating this year. So I would look into how I could easily convert home heating systems to run on bio-fuel or hydrogen power. Determine if I could undercut the price of oil. If it was possible, then I'd put a fleet together to supply communities with the non-oil dependent, renewable heating fuel.
Resource: Greenspan: Energy Prices Chilling U.S. Growth
Ha! Games can improve life skills see: Games skills help wheelchair teen.
Horay for games.
At the beginning of this month I went with some friends to Vegas. Jon and Ben were celebrating their birthdays.
This is Nana, Ben, Barbara, and Jon. Happy Birthday guys.
Our pal Bart went as well, but didn't want a snapshot. I think he'll be in front of the camera quite enough if the topic of the day reaches fulfillment.
Liana and I enjoyed Paris.
It's really hard to take a picture of yourself while you are kissing.
We ended up having to stay an extra day due to tire damage. We stayed at the Luxor. Most of the extra day was rushed and jumbled trying to find a new tire. We did get a bit of great time by the pool.
I had a great time in Vegas. The most fun was hanging out with Liana and my friends in the Rio after the Penn & Teller show. I also just love how you can get lost in a casino. It transports me back to the days when I was little. My mom would take me to a new mall we'd go up and back and down through out the mall. At the end of the day I would be the one who knew exactly where to find the car. I remember feeling that even if you had blind folded me I could still find the car no problem. I still keep three dimensional maps and floor plans in my head. I remember the layouts of most of the buildings and cities in which I've been. I can not comprehend how people can have "no sense of direction." It is such an integral part of me. 
I just listened to both parts ( part1, part2 ) of Wil Wheaton's presentation at Gnomedex 4.0. They express some of the recovery he required after being a child star on Star Trek. One account has him having full discussions with a plastic toy. He's making sappy discoveries about himself as you realize that this guy has not only issues but a full subscription. I imagine his books are filled with similar stories. I couldn't handle a book full. He does tell the tale of the first time he met William Shatner and that story is hilarious.
Unfortunately this picture is not worth 1000 words. Maybe two, dark and crappy.
Over the weekend some friends and I went to Vegas to celebrate a birthday. During our visit we went to see Penn and Teller at the Rio.
Not unlike this picture of the stage, Penn and Teller's show was boring. The snapshot here was taken before the show, when audience members were invited on stage to inspect the boxes that would be used in the first trick. You could move the boxes and fully inspect them.
Just like every other trick to follow in their act, way too much build up. Before every trick Penn would yammer on and on. Effectively encasing what little bits of magic the show had in a sleep inducing turd cocoon. People were actually falling asleep.
The Samba theatre has horrible acustics. Or the guy running the sound board really enjoys the way voices sound through a cell phone. Most of the time it was a strain to decipher what the big guy was saying.
There was an air of stupifaction after the show. But, people weren't trying to figure out how Penn and Teller each caught bullets, with their teeth, that they fired at each other. By the time the bullets were fired we were all just hoping the shots would stop those gums from flapping. The real question on our minds after the show was how they can charge $80 a ticket.
It is a shame because I really enjoyed the episodes that I saw of their show on Showtime, "Bullshit!" But, Penn and Teller at the Rio is not worth a look see. Yet it's still probably better than an Penn length list of Vegas shows.
After several entries ( perks, doing a bit for the environment, too late ) about wanting to see HCC's Hydrogen Powered Shelby Cobra I finally got to see it today. Not only see it but I got to hear it, feel it's clean moist exhaust, and take a ride in it.
This car runs on hydrogen. Not as a fuel cell would, it uses combustion. The only exhaust is water vapor, so putting your face directly in front of the exhaust pipe is no more dangerous than putting your face over a boiling pot of water. If you locked yourself in a garage with the engine running you would have a nice sauna, instead of killing yourself.
Because the original Shelby engine does not have fuel injection it needed a more complex modification for hydrogen. Lloys told me that fuel injection cars need little engine modification. Most of the complexity comes from adjusting the car's computer so that it supports the hydrogen fuel.
Lloys tells me that a standard Cobra gets 12 mpg on gasoline and that they have the engine configured on this one to get 20 mpg of hydrogen. Good thing, because this small black hydrogen tank only holds four gallons. If you ordered a new Cobra you could get a bigger tank in there before they put the skin on the frame. Because this one was a conversion the skin was already there so they went with a smaller tank.
She tells me that the tank is made of carbon fiber. Much stronger than the plastic gas tank that is probably in my car. It has been drop tested, crash tested, and they even shot it with a gun. The tank did not explode. Hydrogen dissipates very quickly. Straight up. Even if it were to catch fire there is no ambient heat transferred from the flame. You would have to be directly in the flame to get hurt.
There are even sensors in the back to shut down the fuel flow in case a leak was detected. Kevin told me that he would rather be rear ended in this car than any gasoline powered car.
The engine is currently configured for 250 hp. They could get more out of it but then it would be less efficient and also run the risk of converting some of the nitrogen in our atmosphere into nitros oxide. Which would be bad for the environment.
It was really amazing. Like any Shelby it was super powerful. The exhaust sound had a nice rumble to it.
My co-workers and I am really thankful to Jim and Kevin for coming from Riverside with the car. I didn't know that they would have to come all the way from Riverside. I thought they had a car at the office on Wilshire. I also didn't realize that the car had to come on a truck. I thought they would be capable of driving it on the street.
As you can see the car has no plates. The smog test requires that the car's engine not be modified. Even if the modification gets better emissions. So technically it failed the smog test. HCC does assure me that if you bought one you could get an experimental car permit. Then you could make it street legal.
As I said, I got to take a ride in it. This is the view from the passenger seat. Very tiny. No seat belts. We didn't open the doors just got in Dukes of hazard style. I'm not sure if the doors actually open, they probably do, but what's the point. It accelerated very quickly. Jim drove it around the parking lot and out into the street and then back around to the parking lot again. He seemed very reluctant, probably because of the "not street legal" situation. It didn't have power steering and looked difficult to turn. The speed bump in the parking lot demonstrated that it has very little ground clearance. On the way back into the parking lot Jim really let it rip. Accelerating around a turn and along the long side of the lot, then braking very quickly. The roar of the engine set off a car alarm.
Of course I would love it if this were my car. The HCC symbol is great too. The H with the one electron around it. So simple, so cool. I can say that several people at Sony are now interested in buying hydrogen Ford Rangers from HCC in the future, myself included. We'll have to see when that hydrogen fueling station opens at UCLA.
We would also like to thank Lloys of HCC for getting the visit together and the T-shirts. Oh and I'm going to keep pushing to get this car into GT5.
Doing good for the environment and getting the US off its dependency on oil.
